The present embodiments relate to calibrating at least one operating parameter of a magnetic resonance apparatus.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a known technique for generating images of the interior of a patient's body based on the physical phenomenon of magnetic resonance (MR).
A magnetic resonance apparatus may include a permanently installed body coil (BC) that may be operated as a transmit and receive coil. Body coils are, for example, described in publications U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,842,003 B2, 7,518,367 B2, and 8,013,605 B2. As a transmit coil, a body coil emits radio-frequency excitation signals, thus causing the excitation of atomic nuclei in the patient's body. The excited atomic nuclei emits magnetic resonance signals that may be received by the body coil or even a local coil as a receive coil. A receive coil may include a plurality (e.g., 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc.) of antennas that together form an antenna array. The antennas are each able to receive magnetic resonance signals independently of one another and forward the magnetic resonance signals on a respective receive channel for further processing.
The first tune-up of a magnetic resonance apparatus is generally also accompanied by calibration of the magnetic resonance apparatus. For example, a service technician uses a phantom to determine a phase relationship between the plurality of independent receive channels of the body coil. This enables the use of image-combination methods based on a phase-weighted combination, a “BC combine”, of individual images. The image-combination methods help to improve image quality (e.g., homogeneity).